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Month: July 2003

Three weeks ago, at the local Wawa, I dis­cov­ered that the folks who make Red-Bull, released a sug­ar-free ver­sion. Now I’ve nev­er been a huge Red-Bull fan, but sug­ar-free Red-Bull sound­ed like the ‘sirens song’ to me.. so I bought a can.

Now a few weeks lat­er, I feel that the Wawa cashier should have giv­en me my first taste for free… need­less to say I’m hooked, Caf­feine addic­tion isn’t any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly new to me, but it is a mon­key that I’ve beat­en off my back more than a few times. When I was dot-com­ing, I could con­sume a twen­ty-four pack of Diet Coke in a sin­gle day, The <em>‘lift’</em> I was get­ting from all that soda doesn’t even com­pare to the <em>‘kick’</em> I’m now get­ting from a sin­gle SFRB, that being the case, log­ic would sug­gest that I’m not deal­ing with com­mon caf­feine, but some type of ‘<em>uber</em>-caffeine’, chem­i­cal­ly altered to not only increase kick, but to increase the addi­tive nature as well. My mon­key was now stronger and more effi­cient.

Some­thing so strong, so new, so addic­tive, you’d think that they’d be sell­ing it on every street cor­ner, but that isn’t the case, my SFRB is a <em>‘boutique beverage’</em>, a <em>‘designer drink’,</em> and only avail­able in a select few places. I have a map, and some col­ored pins… and I think every­thing is going to be okay…

I stopped in a Bagel Joint** for lunch the oth­er day, it was a bit late and they appeared like they may have been prepar­ing to close. I polite­ly asked ‘yaopen­still?’ (it’s all one word, cause that’s pret­ty much how I said it) the counter gal who was busi­ly jam­ming dozens of bagels into a clear plas­tic bag, con­firmed that they where still open but that they didn’t have many bagels left. I asked what kind of bagels they had left, she told me that my bagel options con­sist­ed of ‘cran­ber­ry orange’ and ‘cin­na­mon raisin’… Now mind you that although my moth­er is cuban, I’m 100% Jew­ish, to me nei­ther of these options qual­i­fy to be called bagels, at best ‘cran­ber­ry orange’ and ‘cin­na­mon raisin’ bagels are hi-carb can­dy, or at the very least they’re poor­ly shaped muffins, either way, they both suck for lunch. While grasp­ing for a com­ment, my eyes once again fell on the now full bag of bagels on the counter. “What’s the deal with these bagels?” I asked punc­tu­at­ing it with a poke of the fin­ger in the bags direc­tion

[long pause on her part “Those are the bagels we didn’t sell today, employ­ees are allowed to take the ones that are unsold at clos­ing”[longer pause from me] “So do you think there might be a rye bagel in there?” I asked[punc­tu­at­ing the ques­tion with a eye sparkle and my best 5 dol­lar smile…my pleas­antries bounced off her like bul­lets off super­man]“Sir…I real­ly need to fin­ish clos­ing up..”

Yes..I under­stand, I just want a toast­ed rye bagel, cream cheese, a slice of onion, and two slices of toma­to, and if you wouldn’t mind putting cream cheese on both sides of the bagel, I’d appre­ci­ate it… oh and a large Diet Pep­si, very lit­tle ice” …

[preg­nant pause]Now the pause felt like 15 min­utes, but it was prob­a­bly more like 20 sec­onds, 20 sec­onds of absolute silence except for the poor bas­tard sweep­ing up in the back. “Sir, as I said before we have ‘cran­ber­ry orange’ and ‘cin­na­mon raisin’ bagels left, and no more sliced onions or sliced toma­toes. and then she made an ‘annoyed’ noise that I guess was sup­posed to moti­vate me to either leave the shop of set­tle for the can­dy bagels. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for her I’m not wired that way, to me the annoyed sound was an open invi­ta­tion to fuck with her. what fol­low is a ver­ba­tim account of our exchange. [I think you’ll be able to tell who is who..or is it whom?]

“So your telling me I can’t have a bagel out of your bag?” “Pret­ty Much..yes, I already told my boyfriend I was bring­ing them home” “Is that gen­tle­man sweep­ing in the back, the Man­ag­er?” “What kind of Bagel did you want again?” “Rye, toast­ed, cream cheese both sides, toma­to, onion, large Diet Coke, lit­tle bit of ice…” “we don’t have any sliced toma­to, or sliced onion…SIR” “you don’t have ANY toma­to” “not sliced…” “but you have toma­to?” “yes in the walk-in” “and you have knives?” “of course we have knives” “but you don’t have any sliced toma­toes?” “no..no sliced toma­toes” “are there also onions in the walk-in?” it was at this moment that my cell phone rang, and as usu­al I was forced to step out­side to get bet­ter recep­tion, and just as I did, She locked me out. I guess she won the bat­tle, but the war is just begin­ning.. oh by the way the call was an invi­ta­tion to lunch. ** As to not slan­der an entire estab­lish­ment for what I’m sure is an iso­lat­ed inci­dent, I’ll refrain from nam­ing the actu­al Bagel shop, but just for his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy it’s a Nation­al Chain named after a large NYC Bur­rough